Malcolm Gin - Utilities and Sources

Last edited February 19, 2008
More by Malcolm Gin »

Sections:

Crypto & Randomness
GreaseMonkey Scripts
RSS
Papercraft

This notebook contains links to utilities I use on the Web, or that have directly to do with my browsers. There shouldn't be any NSFW stuff here, but if so, I'll be sure to mark it in the first line or so of text about it.

Crypto & Randomness

Random string and password generator - clsc.net
clsc.net/tools/random-string-generator.php

I use this utility a lot. Honestly, I usually let it generate as many characters as it will and then randomly select a subset especially if using it for a password generator.

I probably wouldn't want to use it for something truly cryptographically secure (as it's possible the Secret Police cache queries to this site and use it as a dictionary attack store, essentially), but it should be OK to use for one-off registrations for blogs and stuff.

GreaseMonkey Scripts

GreaseMonkey is an add-on for Firefox that allows you to run customized javascript for certain defined pages on the web. They allow the dedicated geek to write (or consume others' written) scripts that add more features to applications. GMail is a popular target, but so are other services on the web.

GoogleMonkeyR – Userscripts.org
userscripts.org/scripts/show/9310

This one tweaks Google Result sets and includes user comments and requests and author's responses on how to make minor changes as further customizations to the script.

RSS

Pipes: Rewire the web
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

A utility of extreme awesomeness, for building and filtering your own RSS feeds out of pre-existing ones.

Tired of Lifehacker's diet and health-related articles, I took a feed from feedburner and quickly filtered out those posts (by category). Now those posts don't bother me any more.

Papercraft

I am a long-time origami head, though I haven't learned (memorized) a new design in years. I am a dab hand at most origami models in books, though I've never designed my own. Still, sometimes papercraft is useful in other ways, like the link(s) below. The cd wallet has replaced those expensive lined plastic sleeves in my house for years now, at least for most optical media in the house. (Though I admit we have a few CD/DVD binders for videos and software.)

R&OS origami cd wallet
www.ros.co.nz/cdwallet/

Fill out the form and produce the origami cd-wallet with your tracks listed the way that you want them...

The PDF created uses Origami notation for folding (dashed lines: mountain fold; dotted lines: valley fold). Figure it out from there. Very elegant. Be sure to, when you print, turn off scaling completely through your printer preferences. This may be on by default. Once I figured out to turn that off, the fit was perfect! I like the little spines you get - something that was missing for me with previous paper-based sleeve designs.